Coming off a huge upset win over favored European team Code7, warchild set its sights on taking down 20ID who defeated HOT in an extremely close game 31-25. Neither team knew exactly what to expect on a very USA favored map Dalian Plant for the Grand Finals of Championship Gaming Invitational.

With four flag capture points in Dalian Plant, the idea is to control three of the four flags creating an imbalance in one teams favor. By controlling more flags then the opposing team a bleed takes place in the opposition’s reinforcement tickets (lives). One key feature of Dalian Plant is its lone helicopter pad. With only one helicopter, the control of that gives a huge aerial advantage to the USA because of their closer proximity from their spawn to the helicopter pad flag point.

Warchild started on USA and took advantage quickly performing a fan out strategy using guys in every direction to capture both flags at once. 20ID like an offensive line in American Football decided to take advantage pushing the middle and going for USA’s spawn flag. As soon as their middle push failed though the production set died in the arena.

The entire production stopped and the 30 ticket advantage that warchild had built up from capping both flags were instantly erased as they restarted the map. Still with the large advantage for the USA similar to the old school advantage the offense had on Dust2 in Counter-Strike, the complaints weren’t too loud. Warchild felt they could simply do it again.

Warchild decided to mix it up though in the restart and instead of fanning out, the team concentrated on the helicopter pad. With a pretty tight score early on, warchild finally turned the tables and attacked the other flag point at a 65-45 edge in tickets. Warchild with both flags captured continued to put on the pressure dropping the score all the way to 60-22.

20ID responded though amassing its team and successfully retook the non-helicopter pad flag. Still it was too little to late at this point for 20ID as the team was just taking enough tickets from warchild to hopefully come back in the second half. The half score was 51-0 in favor of warchild who was led in scoring by Malakai.

The second half looked like a must fan situation for 20ID. Starting with 85 tickets for each side, 20ID could only give up 33 tickets if they wanted to win. In order to accomplish that a blitzkrieg style of attack would be necessary and hope that they could hold their middle long enough to keep warchild from taking their spawn flag point.

That’s exactly what 20ID accomplished. After less then a minute 20ID had the helicopter pad secured, and launched its helicopter in support of the other flag point capture. A minute later the flag was down too, bringing the score to 84-70. In less then three minutes 20ID had captured both flags and only lost one member in the onslaught. With such a huge success, 20ID got risky.

Rushing the Chinese spawn point at the bottom of the map, 20ID kept the pressure on warchild by hitting from different directions with armor and helicopter attacks. Warchild hoped to recapture a flag but didn’t seem to have an ability to amass troops for such an operation. The constant offensive pressure by 20ID negated any build up. This left an opportunity for 20ID to make the spawn flag and they did at 78-48.


By capturing the Chinese flag 20ID neturalized the match and didn't allow any further respawns for warchild. This gave 20ID the chance to pick off warchild members as they retreated back to their spawn. The match finally came down to a lone hope for warchild as a single armor stormed their spawn point retook it. Everyone watched as the flag turned back to China and started to rise.

Just as it came up though 20ID swooped in and retook it pounding the lone warchild member in a tank. After two direct rocket hits, one from the helicopter and another from an infantry member, he was done for and jumped out of the tank. Still all alone and on foot against the entire USA force he was doomed. Finally the last warchild member was defeated when a USA armor arrived on the scene and pushed in for the final capture.

That closed it out and gave 20ID the victory in a very impressive fashion. A final score on the half was 77-0 while the overall score ended with a 77-51 score. The very uneven map led for a big shift in momentum but still a close score that forced 20ID to come out extremely aggressive in the second half. They accomplished it and were rewarded with a win and $40,000.

Special thanks to Mailman for this article.